8 Year old game? Doesn't matter, cause it's still getting content surprisingly.
On The Team Fortress 2 website, information regarding the Gun Mettle Campaign has been posted for all to see, and it's a release that seems to be coming tomorrow. There's a lot here to take in, so breaking it down piece by piece is important, because it includes not only weapon changes, but a new buy-able campaign with contracts to take in. Needless to say, the update is all over the place. And some community maps have now become official with this release.
Let's start with the Gun Mettle Campaign itself. For $5.99, the players who buy the campaign get to be part of a three month event which involves two skilled based challenges every week for the campaign length. There are 3 challenges per contract, and the example given is reflecting a projectile as a Pyro, surviving 1000 damage in the life of a Heavy, and killing an airborne enemy with a secondary weapon as a soldier. Completing these objectives, you'll earn a campaign-exclusive weapon or an unlockable weapon case. These guns seem to be similar to the skinned guns found in Counter Strike: Global Offensive. They have six grades of rarities, from Factory New to Battle-Scarred. It implies that the guns can only be obtained here. Paying for the access gives you a campaign coin to throw you into the thick of things, and your progress on active contracts, and even shows off your level to other players.
Now these Campaign-exclusive weapons found in the cases do have the ability to be Strange (which tracks stats) as well as being a chance of being Unusual (a unique effect that hovers around the item), which is new for weapons in the TF2 world (they've been in a previous beta). There are new animations to check the weapons in question, which is a nice little touch. What's also interesting is that if you kill someone that has a weapon that your class can equip, you can pick it up and play with it till you die, changing your loadout on the fly. This is completely new to the game and is interesting to say the least. And of course, like always, we get new taunts, including the Katotsky Kick and the Box Trot, which will be required by lovers of Metal Gear Solid.
A new official 3CP map will be released in Powerhouse, and community created maps have been added in Borneo, Suijin, and Snowplow (Borneo is a map I've played in TF2 Highlander and can immediately recommend).
But that's not all, there's a LOT of changes in terms of class and weapons. Here's a taste of some of them that I looked over that stood out:
- When invisible, Spy receives 20% less damage from all damage sources.
- When invisible, Spy has reduced timer on debuffs.
- The Dead Ringer has been drastically overhalled. The Dead Ringer now immediately removes 50% of clock, triggers a 3 second speed boost, and there's new damage resistance mechanics after the feign death has been triggered.
- Increased base wrench construction speed for engineer to 2.5x faster.
- Level 2 and Level 3 sentries have less passive damage resistance against Heavy miniguns.
- Building repair costs increase from 20 metal to 33 metal to repair 100 HP per wrench hit.
- Mini sentries can now be repaired.
- Mini sentries base build speed decreased, but can be constructed boosted.
- Mini sentries start at 50% health on construction and gain health during construction instead of starting at 100% (As a TF2 Steel scout THANK GOD FOR THIS.)
- The Pomson now drains less uber/cloak over distance.
- Ammo and Repair given to a shielded Sentry is reduced by the strength of the shield (66% reduced). An engineer's death now disables the sentry for 3 seconds like switching away from the Wrangler.
- Passive effects of the Pretty Boy's Pocket Pistol are only in effect when the weapon is deployed (like the burning one). Adds +3 per hit with the pistol, removed + 15 passive. +20% to all sources of damage taken with it out (aka this has been overhauled).
- The Black Box has been changed in terms of how it calculates health given back on hits, and scales with total damage done relative to base damage.
- Loch-n-Load's 20% damage bonus is now +20% damage against buildings.
- Bazaar Bargain no longer loses heads on miss, but collecting a head requires a kill, and initial rate is down to -50%, but each head brings up 25%
In particular, a lot of attention has been paid to sentries this update, and the Spy is going to play a bit differently now. There's a lot here, and for TF2 Highlander this week, it's going to be interesting to see how this changes the metagame.
Does the above seem to want you to get back in the game if you used to play? If you are playing, any of the changes to balance stand out to you? Being a regular TF2 Player with 3000+ hours (I HAVE A PROBLEM), this is unexpected.
